Location: OOOOOOOklahoma where the wind comes sweepin' down the plains.

Posts: 2,361

Well I'm by no means an "expert" in this area, but if you had a good cold air intake, long tube headers, high-flow cat back exhaust, supercharger such as a magnacharger (about 10-12lbs boost), and a tune....easily 600+rwhp. There are also other ways such as different ported intakes and cams that can add substantial HP....all with a good tune of course. You also have the option of a smaller pulley on superchargers for more power out of them. I don't have anything against turbos, except for they're known to produce quite a bit more heat....which is why some go for the STS (rear mounted turbo) system.....and also for the lack of space available under the hood.

Longevity wise...I would think both systems would be very comparable.

There are quite a few posts on other threads that go more indepth into the pros and cons of each, and I'm not too knowledgable on NOS or meth injections.

You've just unknowingly opened a nasty can of worms. You're going to hear from everyone that "xxxxxx" is great and "yyyyy" is garbage.

It's your car and money. Take the time to figure out what YOU want by looking at everything from each point of view, what your ultimate goal is, what you want to do with the power, what your state will allow due to "smog constraints" etc. Nothing is worse than making a purchase for several thousand $$$'s only to find out that your not happy.

That being said, I have had both a Vortec SC and a STS Twin Turbo kit. I liked things about each, but I was happier with the STS kit. If I remember correctly, I got more torque from the Vortec with lower boost (6-7 lbs), but had better control of the STS kit. After a while I added more boost and saw larger gains because of the extra boost (up to 12 lbs). I didn't need nor did I want more than that. I couldn't keep the tires planted.

I liked the STS kit because it didn't fill my engine bay with turbos, heat, tubing, etc. I like having the extra room when needed to work on that part that WILL fail. As far as turbo's go, you can get all you need boost wise with the kit. Some people swear that there is significantly more "lag" with the STS kit, but you can adjust for that now and STS will help you find the right setup if you're concerned about it. (if that were to be what you wanted)

There are other turbo companies out there, turbonetics, HKS, AVO, etc. All of them will have turbo kits for the Camaro in due time. That is what they do. Who's the best? That is an even larger debate.

I liked the SC, but it took more time to get everything right on my setup. I had belt issues, pulley issues, and stupidity issues. (I listened to the wrong guy and added a 50 hp shot of nitrus to cool the air temp going into the SC and blew my big $$ manifold apart when it wasn't tuned properly)

When the SC was dialed in, it was on. After a while I wanted to try something new and went to TT. Then I had a hole new set of issues.

All I know is that there have been a lot of advances for forced induction. I prefer turbo but that's not to say supercharging is bad it's just different, a turbo has more things to go wrong on it. A supercharger can be used with minimal effort and less heat stress on the engine. It's a lot of cooling and heating that can lead to warping and breaking on a turbo engine.

This is an endless debate, both system make great poweer, the thing with turbos in my opinion of course is that they are more efficient and use spent exhaust gasses instead of having to be spun by the engine, they also have a bit of lag which you would think is a bad thing till you smoke up your tires at the track... with that bit of lag the launches are traction is more controllable. of course smaller street turbo's hardly produce any lag how they are built today... for muscle though i love that supercharger whine... but they have turbo's that sound like jets which is also cool!